Masashi Kishimoto 岸本 斉史 is a Japanese manga artist, famous for creating the popular series Naruto ナルト; a series about a world of ninja villages, each with their own characteristics.

Kishimoto first got Naruto serialised in 1999, and Naruto has grown to become one of the most popular series in the world, with millions of copies of the manga sold worldwide, and the anime being watched equally as much.

Naruto revolves around the character it is based on, Uzumaki Naruto うずまき ナルト, who at the start of the manga is a ninja in training with a powerful secret inside of him. The story revolves around him growing as a ninja and his other ninja contemporaries of his subsequent fights and developments. Naruto intends to become the head of his village, the strongest ninja. From this determination he continues to surprise and defeat foes who think him unworthy.

The series has a wide variety of cast members and interesting plot developments. One of the features of Naruto is the combat system that is used by the ninjas which is split into three main sections, ninjutsu (utilizing chakra – a person’s energy – to perform special attacks), taijutsu (martial art ability/physical ability) and genjutsu (illusionary techniques). This allows for a wide variety of attacks and strategies to be set up in the plot, which make for both an interesting read and an interesting watch in the animation.

The anime of Naruto falls into the common pitfalls of filler arcs and comedy episodes that get included, but again due to amazing musical score and voice acting (in the Japanese version), the anime is a worthwhile watch. The series as a whole touches on some serious issues, and there are a lot allegiances broken and made frequently to keep you guessing who is the bad guy. The only really strange thing about Naruto is that Naruto, the main character, wears a bright orange set of clothes and has bright yellow hair, not really the best choice for a ninja who’s supposed to rely on being undetected in the undergrowth.

The art style of Naruto is always very interesting because of all the fights involved in the plot, there are many action drawings in the manga to keep up the interest. Whilst the studio that does the animation for the anime can be a little lax sometimes , they generally puts out a great show for the big fights in the plot.

Overall if you like a lot of action, Naruto is definitely a good read/watch.

Naruto is the only anime he’s had done of his manga. He had 2 other one-shot(1 issue) mangas Karakuri and Bench, I think Karakuri got republished over a month too in 1998. So he’s pretty much focused on Naruto, which I guess is smart, because it’s insanely popular.